The French Lieutenant’s Woman

by John Robert Fowles

  He was well aware that this was a dream. But Mary, so to speak, underlined the fact; what is more, sharpened the hideous features of the demon that stood so squarely in the way of its fulfillment. Its name? Short-of-the-ready. Perhaps it was this ubiquitous enemy of humankind that Sam was still staring at in his master’s sitting room, where he had made himself comfortable—having first watched Charles safely out of sight down Broad Street, with yet another mysterious pursing of the lips—as he toyed with his second supper: a spoonful or two of soup, the choicer hearts of the mutton slices, for Sam had all the instincts, if none of the finances, of a swell. But now again he was staring into space past a piece of mutton anointed with caper sauce, which he held poised on his fork, though oblivious to its charms.

  Mal (if I may add to your stock of useless knowledge) is an Old English borrowing from Old Norwegian and was brought to us by the Vikings. It originally meant “speech,” but since the only time the Vikings went in for that rather womanish activity was to demand something at axeblade, it came to mean “tax” or “payment in tribute.” One branch of the Vikings went south and founded the Mafia in, Sicily; but another—and by this time mal was spelled mail—were busy starting their own protection rackets on the Scottish border. If one cherished one’s crops or one’s daughter’s virginity one paid mail to the neighborhood chieftains; and the victims, in the due course of an expensive time, called it black mail.

  If not exactly engaged in etymological speculation, Sam was certainly thinking of the meaning of the word; for he had guessed at once who the “unfortunate woman” was. Such an event as the French Lieutenant’s Woman’s dismissal was too succulent an item not to have passed through every mouth in Lyme in the course of the day; and Sam had already overheard a conversation in the taproom as he sat at his first and interrupted supper. He knew who Sarah was, since Mary had mentioned her one day. He also knew his master and his manner; he was not himself; he was up to something; he was on his way to somewhere other than Mrs. Tranter’s house. Sam laid down the fork and its morsel and began to tap the side of his nose; a gesture not unknown in the ring at Newmarket, when a bow-legged man smells a rat masquerading as a racehorse. But the rat here, I am afraid, was Sam—and what he smelled was a sinking ship.

  Downstairs at Winsyatt they knew very well what was going on; the uncle was out to spite the nephew. With the rural working class’s innate respect for good husbandry they despised Charles for not visiting more often—in short, for not buttering up Sir Robert at every opportunity. Servants in those days were regarded as little more than furniture, and their masters frequently forgot they had both ears and intelligences; certain abrasive exchanges between the old man and his heir had not gone unnoticed and undiscussed. And though there was a disposition among the younger female staff to feel sorry for the handsome Charles, the sager part took a kind of ant’s-eye view of the frivolous grasshopper and his come-uppance. They had worked all their lives for their wages; and they were glad to see Charles punished for his laziness.

  Besides, Mrs. Tomkins, who was very much as Ernestina suspected, an upper-middle-class adventuress, had shrewdly gone out of her way to ingratiate herself with the housekeeper and the butler; and those two worthies had set their imprimatur—or ducatur in matrimonium—upon the plump and effusive widow; who furthermore had, upon being shown a long-unused suite in the before-mentioned east wing, remarked to the housekeeper how excellent a nursery the rooms would make. It was true that Mrs. Tomkins had a son and two daughters by her first marriage; but in the housekeeper’s opinion—graciously extended to Mr. Benson, the butler—Mrs. Tomkins was as good as expecting again.

  “It could be daughters, Mrs. Trotter.”

  “She’s a trier, Mr. Benson. You mark my words. She’s a trier.”

  The butler sipped his dish of tea, then added, “And tips well.” Which Charles, as one of the family, did not.

  The general substance of all this had come to Sam’s ears, while he waited down in the servants’ hall for Charles. It had not come pleasantly in itself or pleasantly inasmuch as Sam, as the servant of the grasshopper, had to share part of the general judgment on him; and all this was not altogether unconnected with a kind of second string Sam had always kept for his bow: a faute de mieux dream in which he saw himself in the same exalted position at Winsyatt that Mr. Benson now held. He had even casually planted this seed—and one pretty certain to germinate, if he chose—in Mary’s mind. It was not nice to see one’s tender seedling, even if it was not the most cherished, so savagely uprooted.

  Charles himself, when they left Winsyatt, had not said a word to Sam, so officially Sam knew nothing about his blackened hopes. But his master’s blackened face was as good as knowledge.

  And now this.

  Sam at last ate his congealing mutton, and chewed it, and swallowed it; and all the time his eyes stared into the future.

  Charles’s interview with his uncle had not been stormy, since both felt guilty—the uncle for what he was doing, the nephew for what he had failed to do in the past. Charles’s reaction to the news, delivered bluntly but with telltale averted eyes, had been, after the first icy shock, stiffly polite.

  “I can only congratulate you, sir, and wish you every happiness.”

  His uncle, who had come upon him soon after we left Charles in the drawing room, turned away to a window, as if to gain heart from his green acres. He gave a brief account of his passion. He had been rejected at first: that was three weeks ago. But he was not the man to turn tail at the first refusal. He had sensed a certain indecision in the lady’s voice. A week before he had taken train to London and “galloped straight in again”; the obstinate hedge was triumphantly cleared. “She said ‘no’ again, Charles, but she was weeping. I knew I was over.” It had apparently taken two or three days more for the definitive “Yes” to be spoken.

  “And then, my dear boy, I knew I had to face you. You are the very first to be told.”

  But Charles remembered then that pitying look from old Mrs. Hawkins; all Winsyatt had the news by now. His uncle’s somewhat choked narration of his amorous saga had given him time to absorb the shock. He felt whipped and humiliated; a world less. But he had only one defense: to take it calmly, to show the stoic and hide the raging boy.

  “I appreciate your punctiliousness, Uncle.”

  “You have every right to call me a doting old fool. Most of my neighbors will.”

  “Late choices are often the best.”

  “She’s a lively sort of woman, Charles. Not one of your damned niminy-piminy modern misses.” For one sharp moment Charles thought this was a slight on Ernestina—as it was, but not intended. His uncle went obliviously on. “She says what she thinks. Nowadays some people consider that signifies a woman’s a thruster. But she’s not.” He enlisted the agreement of his parkland. “Straight as a good elm.”

  “I never for a moment supposed she could be anything else.”

  The uncle cast a shrewd look at him then; just as Sam played the meek footman with Charles, so did Charles sometimes play the respectful nephew with the old man.

  “I would rather you were angry than…” he was going to say a cold fish, but he came and put his arm round Charles’s shoulder; for he had tried to justify his decision by working up anger against Charles—and he was too good a sportsman not to know it was a mean justification. “Charles, now damn it, it must be said. This brings an alteration to your prospects. Though at my age, heaven knows…” that “bullfinch” he did refuse. “But if it should happen, Charles, I wish you to know that whatever may come of the marriage, you will not go unprovided for. I can’t give you the Little House; but I wish emphatically that you take it as yours for as long as you live. I should like that to be my wedding gift to Ernestina and yourself—and the expenses of doing the place up properly, of course.”

  “That is most generous of you. But I think we have more or less decided to go into the Belgravia house when the lease falls in.”

  “Yes, yes,
but you must have a place in the country. I will not have this business coming between us, Charles. I shall break it off tomorrow if—”

  Charles managed a smile. “Now you are being absurd. You might well have married many years ago.”

  “That may be. But the fact is I didn’t.”

  He went nervously to the wall and placed a picture back into alignment. Charles was silent; perhaps he felt less hurt at the shock of the news than at the thought of all his foolish dream of possession as he drove up to Winsyatt. And the old devil should have written. But to the old devil that would have been a cowardice. He turned from the painting.

  “Charles, you’re a young fellow, you spend half your life traveling about. You don’t know how deuced lonely, bored, I don’t know what it is, but half the time I feel I might as well be dead.”

  Charles murmured, “I had no idea…”

  “No, no, I don’t mean to accuse you. You have your own life to lead.” But he did still, secretly, like so many men without children, blame Charles for falling short of what he imagined all sons to be—dutiful and loving to a degree ten minutes’ real fatherhood would have made him see was a sentimental dream. “All the same there are things only a woman can bring one. The old hangings in this room, now. Had you noticed? Mrs. Tomkins called them gloomy one day. And damn it, I’m blind, they were gloomy. Now that’s what a woman does. Makes you see what’s in front of your nose.” Charles felt tempted to suggest that spectacles performed the same function a great deal more cheaply, but he merely bowed his head in understanding. Sir Robert rather unctuously waved his hand. “What say you to these new ones?”

  Charles then had to grin. His uncle’s aesthetic judgments had been confined for so long to matters such as the depth of a horse’s withers and the superiority of Joe Manton over any other gunmaker known to history that it was rather like hearing a murderer ask his opinion of a nursery rhyme.

  “A great improvement.”

  “Just so. Everyone says the same.”

  Charles bit his lip. “And when am I going to meet the lady?”

  “Indeed, I was coming to that. She is most anxious to get to know you. And Charles, most delicate in the matter of… well, the… how shall I put it?”

  “Limitations of my prospects?”

  “Just so. She confessed last week she first refused me for that very reason.” This was, Charles realized, supposed to be a commendation, and he showed a polite surprise. “But I assured her you had made an excellent match. And would understand and approve my choice of partner… for my last years.”

  “You haven’t yet answered my question, Uncle.”

  Sir Robert looked a little ashamed. “She is visiting family in Yorkshire. She is related to the Daubenys, you know.”

  “Indeed.”

  “I go to join her there tomorrow.”

  “Ah.”

  “And I thought it best to get it over man to man. But she is most anxious to meet you.” His uncle hesitated, then with a ludicrous shyness reached in his waistcoat pocket and produced a locket. “She gave me this last week.”

  And Charles stared at a miniature, framed in gold and his uncle’s heavy fingers, of Mrs. Bella Tomkins. She looked disagreeably young; firm-lipped; and with assertive eyes—not at all unattractive, even to Charles. There was, curiously, some faint resemblance to Sarah in the face; and a subtle new dimension was added to Charles’s sense of humiliation and dispossession. Sarah was a woman of profound inexperience, and this was a woman of the world; but both in their very different ways—his uncle was right—stood apart from the great niminy-piminy flock of women in general. For a moment he felt himself like a general in command of a weak army looking over the strong dispositions of the enemy; he foresaw only too clearly the result of a confrontation between Ernestina and the future Lady Smithson. It would be a rout.

  “I see I have further reason to congratulate you.”

  “She’s a fine woman. A splendid woman. Worth waiting for, Charles.” His uncle dug him in the ribs. “You’ll be jealous. Just see if you won’t.” He gazed fondly again at the locket, then closed it reverentially and replaced it in his pocket. And then, as if to counteract the soft sop, he briskly made Charles accompany him to the stables to see his latest brood mare, bought for “a hundred guineas less than she was worth”; and which seemed a totally unconscious but distinct equine parallel in his mind to his other new acquisition.

  They were both English gentlemen; and they carefully avoided further discussion of, if not further reference to (for Sir Robert was too irrepressibly full of his own good luck not to keep on harking back), the subject uppermost in both their minds. But Charles insisted that he must return to Lyme and his fiancee that evening; and his uncle, who in former days would, at such a desertion, have sunk into a black gloom, made no great demur now. Charles promised to discuss the matter of the Little House with Ernestina, and to bring her to meet the other bride-to-be as soon as could be conveniently arranged. But all his uncle’s last-minute warmth and hand-shaking could not disguise the fact that the old man was relieved to see the back of him.

  Pride had buoyed Charles up through the three or four hours of his visit; but his driving away was a sad business. Those lawns, pastures, railings, landscaped groves seemed to slip through his fingers as they slipped slowly past his eyes. He felt he never wanted to see Winsyatt again. The morning’s azure sky was overcast by a high veil of cirrus, harbinger of that thunderstorm we have already heard in Lyme, and his mind soon began to plummet into a similar climate of morose introspection.

  This latter was directed not a little against Ernestina. He knew his uncle had not been very impressed by her fastidious little London ways; her almost total lack of interest in rural life. To a man who had devoted so much of his life to breeding she must have seemed a poor new entry to such fine stock as the Smithsons. And then one of the bonds between uncle and nephew had always been their bachelorhood—perhaps Charles’s happiness had opened Sir Robert’s eyes a little: if he, why not I? And then there was the one thing about Ernestina his uncle had thoroughly approved of: her massive marriage portion. But that was precisely what allowed him to expropriate Charles with a light conscience.

  But above all, Charles now felt himself in a very displeasing position of inferiority as regards Ernestina. His income from his father’s estate had always been sufficient for his needs; but he had not increased the capital. As the future master of Winsyatt he could regard himself as his bride’s financial equal; as a mere rentier he must become her financial dependent. In disliking this, Charles was being a good deal more fastidious than most young men of his class and age. To them dowry-hunting (and about this time, dollars began to be as acceptable as sterling) was as honorable a pursuit as fox-hunting or gaming. Perhaps that was it: he felt sorry for himself and yet knew very few would share his feeling. It even exacerbated his resentment that circumstances had not made his uncle’s injustice even greater: if he had spent more time at Winsyatt, say, or if he had never met Ernestina in the first place…

  But it was Ernestina, and the need once again to show the stiff upper lip, that was the first thing to draw him out of his misery that day.

  27

  How often I sit, poring o’er

  My strange distorted youth,

  Seeking in vain, in all my store,

  One feeling based on truth;…

  So constant as my heart would be,

  So fickle as it must,

  ‘Twere well for others and for me

  ‘Twere dry as summer dust.

  Excitements come, and act and speech

  Flow freely forth:—but no,

  Nor they, nor aught beside can reach

  The buried world below.

  A. H. Clough, Poem (1840)

  The door was opened by the housekeeper. The doctor, it seemed, was in his dispensary; but if Charles would like to wait upstairs… so, divested of his hat and his Inverness cape he soon found himself in that same room where he had drunk t
he grog and declared himself for Darwin. A fire burned in the grate; and evidence of the doctor’s solitary supper, which the housekeeper hastened to clear, lay on the round table in the bay window overlooking the sea. Charles very soon heard feet on the stairs. Grogan came warmly into the room, hand extended.

  “This is a pleasure, Smithson. That stupid woman now—has she not given you something to counteract the rain?”

  “Thank you…” he was going to refuse the brandy decanter, but changed his mind. And when he had the glass in his hand, he came straight out with his purpose. “I have something private and very personal to discuss. I need your advice.”

  A little glint showed in the doctor’s eyes then. He had had other well-bred young men come to him shortly before their marriage. Sometimes it was gonorrhea, less often syphilis; sometimes it was mere fear, masturbation phobia; a widespread theory of the time maintained that the wages of self-abuse was impotence. But usually it was ignorance; only a year before a miserable and childless young husband had come to see Dr. Grogan, who had had gravely to explain that new life is neither begotten nor born through the navel.

  “Do you now? Well I’m not sure I have any left—I’ve given a vast amount of it away today. Mainly concerning what should be executed upon that damned old bigot up in Marlborough House. You’ve heard what she’s done?”

  “That is precisely what I wish to talk to you about.”

  The doctor breathed a little inward sigh of relief; and he once again jumped to the wrong conclusion.